The filmmakers researched the film by traveling on The Canadian, north of Lake Superior, living on the train for two weeks, collecting stories. The stop motion animation took them more than five years.[1][2][3] Critics lauded the film for its groundbreaking stop-motion animation techniques. Portrait artist Jason Walker created the technique of adding composited human eyes to the stop motion puppets.[4][5][6] For the lead character, actress Laurie Maher was recorded acting out the motions, but only her eyes and eyebrows were ultimately visible in the final film.

In early 2008, before the 80th Academy Awards, the NFB began a promotion campaign entitled "NFB at the Oscars", commemorating the 12 awards and 70 nominations that NFB productions have received. To celebrate the nomination of Madame Tutli-Putli for Best Animated Short Film, the NFB announced that it would make the film freely available for viewing online, but with a caveat—each of the 23,287 frames had to first be unlocked, one by each visitor from a unique IP address. Once the entire film was unlocked, it was made available for viewing at CBC.ca.[11]